


The Toy Soldier Joins the Circus

by WillowWispFlame



Series: So Sings a Song of Slaughter [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist is a Mechanism, Minor Violence, Queerplatonic Relationships, Slaughter Avatar Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Mechanisms Are Grifter's Bone, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25066666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowWispFlame/pseuds/WillowWispFlame
Summary: Jessica likes to collect things.The Circus is in town!
Relationships: Nikola Orsinov & The Toy Soldier (The Mechanisms), Original Female Character & The Toy Soldier (The Mechanisms)
Series: So Sings a Song of Slaughter [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775218
Comments: 17
Kudos: 159
Collections: So Sings a Song of Slaughter





	The Toy Soldier Joins the Circus

**Author's Note:**

> You all were wondering what happened to Jessica.

Jessica had always been interested in dolls. Not the horrible plastic ones with perfect hair and skinny figures or the baby dolls which felt soft and hard in the wrong places. No, her favorite dolls were porcelain. Call her old fashioned. Their delicately painted faces, carefully spun yarn hair, and handmade clothing were charming. They were feats of human craftsmanship, unlike the mass produced marvels that filled toy stores. 

She had quite the collection, antique dolls that lined a wall in her home all their own. Every so often, she would take them down to dust and run her thumbs over their features. So many had little, blushing cheeks. They looked happy in their intricate gowns and carefully brushed hair. 

Another collection of hers was of old nutcrackers. They only surfaced during the winter months, when a veritable army of them gathered throughout her home. They came in various shapes and sizes, some only a few centimeters tall while others stretched up to a meter in height. No two nutcrackers were the same, save the occasional duplicate that a friend had gifted her. They each had their own blank staring face. A mustache would be carefully painted or carved or stuck, depending on the artist’s choice, to the face of the little soldier. That was always her favorite feature. They too had their own outfits, like the dolls that sat watching above. Little soldier uniforms painted onto stiff wood, hats woven or carved atop their heads. 

Jessica had little nutcracker soldiers from almost every era, and at least one from every country where they made nutcrackers. The nutcrackers were perhaps her most expensive hobby to collect for, as she wanted to manage a complete collection, and wanted to buy handmade crafts instead of the ones made in a factory thousands of miles away from where they represent. 

Jessica inspired her stage persona off of a nutcracker. The Toy Soldier was a stiff, wooden thing, always following orders no matter who gave them. It always had a painted, curled mustache matching those of her collection. There was a strange irony in making a soldier character for her to play in a band, only for the violence for which the character was known to make its way into real life. 

Her third, and according to her friends the creepiest, collection was her clowns. It had started as an offshoot of her dolls, sometimes she would see the most beautiful porcelain doll and it would happen to be wearing clown makeup. The clowns did not really fit in with the rest of her dolls, so she set them aside in a different room. It was only reasonable for a couple of clown dolls to slowly spawn a few sculpted clown figurines and clown portraits.

If one were superstitious, one would worry about Jessica somehow encountering and inviting into her home some sort of haunted doll, which would then murder her in her sleep and replace her in the lives of her friends and family. While Jessica was much more involved in the supernatural than she would prefer, she still scoffed at the idea. Her dolls might be creepy, scary even, to some, but they were no more dangerous than the shadows of coats in a closet pretending to be people. 

That is to say, Jessica and the rest of the Mechanisms had only dipped their toes into the ocean of weird, and they had no idea of what they were up against. 

[]++++||====\ \===>

“Hey Jess!” Pierrette called. “Time to get going if we don’t want to miss the show!”

“Coming, I’m just locking up,” Jessica yelled over her shoulder, clicking the door to their flat locked. The key stuck in the lock for a second, and Pierette could see it make her tug on her arm uncomfortably when she tried to pull it out and run to the car, but she made it eventually and slid into the passenger seat. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she said excitedly and clicked her seatbelt on. 

Pierrette grinned at Jessica’s antics, pulling carefully out of the apartment complex’s parking lot. Her car’s navigation system chimed directions to the temporary fairgrounds where the Russian circus that had come to town had set up. “What are you most excited to see?” 

“Well, you know that I love clowns, but I’ve never seen an actual circus clown in person,” Jessica gushed. “So I’m very excited to meet a clown, but the other parts of the circus interest me as well. They don’t allow filming of their performances, but the reviews online said that their contortionist is especially skilled. The guy who told me about it- really you should have seen it, he was all dressed up as a ringmaster, red tasseled coat and everything, to advertise. Anyway, he said that their acrobats...”

Pierrette enjoyed her queerplatonic partner’s enthusiasm during the drive, interjecting every now and then to show that she was listening intently. Jessica wasn’t usually comfortable enough to go on about her interests like this, so she savored this side of Jessica like nothing else. 

As they approached the circus, various red and white striped tents with multi-colored flags waving from the tops rose impressively into the sky. They were far more massive than Pierrette had expected, although the largest of them dwarfed its smallest companions. She dropped off Jessica near the ticket booth, spotting the slow moving line that already stretched from the small tent where they had a cash register set up, and went to park. 

By the time Pierrette had found a spot and walked back to the front, Jessica was almost to the front of the line, and she joined her with a clasp of their hands. 

“Spot any clowns yet?” Pierrette asked.

“Nope, not yet,” Jessica said distractedly. 

Pierrette frowned. “Something wrong?” She peeked around the people in line in front of them, towards the front where Jessica was looking. A man with a name tag reading ‘Daniel R’ in all capital letters was manning the ticket booth. 

“Do you hear a glockenspiel?”

Pierrette blinked and listened. Sure enough, it sounded like someone was playing a metallophone in the big top tent near them. “Yeah, I think it’s the circus. You used to play one for your band, right?” 

“R-right.”

Jessica had come home, distressed and unresponsive after one of their gigs more than a year and a half or so ago. Her Toy Soldier uniform had been stained with red. Pierrette had eventually been able to get Jessica to explain that they had a bad experience with a bar fight, which had left them all shaken. A little while later, the band had tried to get together and get back into the groove with a new show in a safer part of the city. Jessica had returned early that night, saying that the band had decided to take an indefinite break after yet another fight had broken out. After that, Jessica had been too depressed to even touch her small collection of instruments for an entire year, and had seemed scared to even touch her favorite mallets. 

Pierrette remembered that around a year after that last performance, Jessica had disappeared early one night after a listless and distracted week, only to reappear early in the morning drunk, crying and covered in some sort of grime. She had been stuttering about some sort of bug she had to kill, but Pierrette’s eyes had locked onto the black mustache painted on her cheeks. All that she could think was that Jessica had gone out with her bandmates again, and had yet another bad experience with them. 

Pierrette shook Jessica’s shoulder, hoping to shake her out of her listless state. She hoped that the sound of the glockenspiel wasn’t enough to trigger some sort of trauma reaction in her loved one. “Hey Jess, it’s alright. Remember we are at the circus, you have been so excited to come this last week,” she paused, dragging her eyes over Jessica’s face. “If you feel uncomfortable, we don’t have to stay.”

“No,” Jessica said with force. “No, I want to be here, I want to have fun tonight.”

“Alright,” said Pierrette, who wrapped an arm around Jessica’s shoulders and tugged her close. They were almost to the front of the line. 

A few minutes later, Jessica seemed to be in much higher spirits, skipping around with her ticket in hand like a little kid. They had a few minutes to pick out something from the concession stand, a pretzel and bag of popcorn to share for now. Soon they entered the tent, finding a spot in the middle of the audience that circled the central ring. 

As the show started, the lights cut out, silencing the audience with a collective gasp. A moment later, a spotlight shone down on a single figure in the center of the ring. The ringmaster.

[]++++||====\ \===>

“Let her go,” Jessica ordered. A wooden tent stake somehow made its way into her hand, and she trembled with rage at the sight in front of her.

The ringmaster of the circus, who had introduced herself as Nikola Orsinov, had Pierrette in a headlock. Her queerplatonic partner struggled and scratched at the ringmaster’s arm, trying to free herself. “I don’t think I will,” Nikola said with her deep, unsettling voice. Her smile was plastic. “Now run away, little human, before I decide to kill you as well.”

Jessica really only had one choice, any other was unthinkable. The Toy Soldier dropped its act, becoming something that Jessica hated. It had to, for Pierrette. 

The sounds of a calliope filled the air, but the Toy Soldier saw no musician here but itself. It had no instrument but its voice, but that was more than enough for its purposes. 

The creature that called itself Nikola blinked in surprise, but laughed in the face of the danger that the Toy Soldier radiated. 

The Toy Soldier started to sing.

“ _ As children grow, the toys they build, _

_ From wood to steel with hate are filled.” _

Nikola wouldn’t stop laughing, and her plastic smile turned predatory. 

The Toy Soldier refused to let itself be cowed, and it charged forwards to try and drive the stake into Nikola’s head. 

_ “Colonels, generals, marshals plan. _

_ Their lines in every patch of sand. _ ”

The monster shoved Pierrette onto the ground in front of her, where the woman scrambled away in fear. The Toy Soldier had to stop its charge to step around her, not enraged enough to lose its mind and hurt Pierrette. It hoped that she would run, run back to their car and drive home away from this clown who dared to try and kill her. 

“ _ Marching ever through the black. _

_ Orders fly, retreat, attack. _ ”

The Toy Soldier did its best to stress the word ‘retreat’ as it sang, tent stake streaking towards Nikola, who danced out of range of the sharpened wood. It needed to distract Nikola long enough for Pierrette to get away, and then it could destroy what dared to harm her. Then it could return to being Jessica and go back to her partner’s waiting arms and explain every secret she had been too afraid to share. 

“ _ Whoe’er commands a toy obeys, _

_ Out in the stars and far away. _ ”

The Toy Soldier’s stake was knocked out of its hand, Nikola was unnaturally flexible. She reminded it of the dolls that Jessica loved so much. They turned to grappling each other, falling to the dusty grass in their struggle. 

Pierrette had finally caught her breath and started to run. As she rounded the nearest tent, the Toy Soldier foolishly let itself relax. Something strong caught it under the arms and lifted it off of Nikola as it tried to bash her head in with an elbow. It opened its mouth, to scream or sing it did not know, but another strong hand was quickly wrapped over its mouth. 

The Toy Soldier’s eyes lolled, catching sight of one of the strongmen who had lifted impossibly heavy things back in the main tent. It struggled uselessly against the strongman’s grip as Nikola picked herself up from the grass, dusting off her uniform. 

She lifted a hand up to her cheek, where the Toy Soldier had managed to scratch her face. When the hand fell away, some skin fell with it, disturbing even the Toy Soldier’s hardened stomach. She was wooden underneath. 

Like a doll.

It understood Jessica’s friends’ unease now. 

Nikola stepped closer to where the strongman held the Toy Soldier and ran a few fingers lightly over its throat. It swallowed. 

“What a beautiful voice,” she murmured. “Are you one of the Song that Decimates All’s number then?” She cocked her head to the side. “No, no you are not quite strong enough all on your own, are you? Enough to hurt, but not Slaughter.”

“You want us to throw it in the coffin?” the strongman asked in an awful Cockney accent.

Nikola looked the Toy Soldier over carefully. “No,” she decided. “I think we might have other uses for this one. After what happened the last time we attempted the Unknowing, I think it would be quite poetic to use one of the Songs to bring in the new world. Maybe we can teach it how to play along to our music. And that voice, well, I’ve been wanting a new one for quite some time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pierrette's name was pulled from the Toy Soldier's backstory, as she is one of the members of the audience enamored with it. Both Jessica and Pierrette are aromantic and in a queerplatonic relationship with each other. I definitely projected onto Jessica for this one.


End file.
